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USC Digital Voltaire

Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis

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Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (28 September 1698 – 27 July 1759) was a mathematician, biologist, and astronomer, born (in Saint Malo, France) in a family of provincial French nobility. In 1714 he was sent to the Collège de La Marche in Paris (demolished in 1855 to make way for what is now the Rue des Écoles [5^th arrondissement in Paris]), where he studied philosophy. He remained there only two years, before returning to Saint-Malo, at the insistence of his mother. He then learned music and was very interested in mathematics. In 1718 his father secured him an honorific cavalry commission. After three years in the cavalry, during which time he became acquainted with fashionable social and mathematical circles, he moved to Paris and began building his reputation as a mathematician and literary wit.

He became involved in science as a member of a group that met at the Parisian Café Procope (http://www.travelsignposts.com/Paris/food/le-procope) in the early 1720s. He ended his military career when he was admitted to the Académie des sciences (http://www.academie-sciences.fr/en/) as an adjunct in geometry in 1723, and his early papers, beginning with one in 1724 on the shapes of musical instruments, dealt principally with mathematics. He also did experimental work on salamanders and scorpions. In 1728, while on a short visit to London, he was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society because of his zealous support of Newton. His Discours sur les différentes figures des astres, … avec une Exposition abbrégée des systèmes de M. Descartes et de M. Newton (Discourse on the different figures of the stars, … with an abbreviated Exposition of the systems of M. Descartes and M. Newton, 1732) elicited great hostility from French physicists who largely supported the Cartesian theories. However, Maupertuis gained the admiration and support of Voltaire who declared himself Maupertuis’ proselyte. Voltaire introduced him to Madame du Châtelet whom he tutored in Newtonian physics and who became his mistress. In 1736, the Académie des sciences entrusted him with the leadership of an expedition to Lapland (a second expedition was directed by La Condamine who headed for Peru) to measure the length of a meridian arc of 1 °. The reason: measurements made at the pole and at the equator would make it possible to specify the shape of the Earth. The measurements that were reported confirmed the hypothesis that the Earth is a spheroid flattened at the poles, in accordance with Newton's theory. With the success of this mission Maupertuis gained a great reputation throughout Europe.

On the recommendation of Voltaire, he was invited by King Frederick II of Prussia, in 1741, to become a member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences (http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Societies/Berlin.html). He was elected to the Académie française in 1743.

Maupertuis continued to write both learned works and popularizations, such as the 1742 Lettre sur la Comète (Letter on the Comet), which demonstrated the superiority of Newtonian to Cartesian explanations of the paths of comets. However, he was also growing tired of the Newton/Descartes debate, and, by the middle of the decade, his interests had broadened to include biological questions.

In 1744, in his Dissertation physique à l’occasion du nègre blanc (Physical Dissertation on the Occasion of a White Negro[1]) he seized the oportunity to present his own theory of the inheritance of traits, according to which albinism amounts to something akin to genetic mutation; he thus affirmed that albinism is an hereditary anomaly. The following year, in his Vénus physique, he opposed the theory of the embryo’s preforming (preformation or préformisme), then in vogue, and he affirmed that the father and mother have an equal influence on heredity. In Système de la Nature, (which he first published in Latin, in 1751, then in French, in 1754, under the pseudonym of M. Bauman) he relied on a careful study of the cases of polydactyly (or polydactylism; extra fingers or toes) over several generations of a Berlin family, to establish that this anomaly is transmitted by both the father and the mother. He explained it by a mutation of the hereditary patrimony, and noted that the probability of finding it in the future in other members of the family could be calculated. Maupertuis saw a progressive variation of species, but he also sensed the existence of mutations and admited, before Lamarck, the heredity of the acquired characters.

In 1745, Maupertuis eventually yielded to Frederick II’s entreaties and relocated in Berlin where he was given the presidency of the Academy of Sciences the following year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_Academy_of_Sciences). His first paper sponsored by this Academy is a brief paper, Les lois du mouvement et du repos ("The Laws of Motion and Rest", 1744[2]), in which he describes one of the fundamental principles of mechanics, the principle of lesser action, which he later published in his Essai de cosmologie (1750), and which he considered to be his major scientific contribution: “La nature dans la production de ses effets agit toujours par les moyens les plus simples […]. Lorsqu'il arrive quelque changement dans la nature, la quantité d'action nécessaire pour ce changement est la plus petite qu'il soit possible.”[3].

In Berlin, while having a great influence on the Academy, Maupertuis made many enemies. The German mathematician Samuel König (1712-1757), pupil of Johann 1^st Bernoulli, accused him of having plagiarized Leibniz and disputed the validity of the principle of least action. In the polemic thus triggered, Maupertuis received the support of Euler, but Voltaire, now jealous of his influence with Frederick II, took König's part and wrote La Diatribe du docteur Akakia (The Diatribe of Doctor Akakia,1752). He also mocked the expedition in Laponia in Micromégas, and attacked Maupertuis with his sarcasms. Maupertuis eventually capitulated and abandoned the presidency of the Academy in 1753. Due to illness, he returned to France in 1756, when the Seven Years War broke out. He died in the house of Johann II Bernoulli in Basel.

Danielle Mihram: June 2017
Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis appears in the following letters.
Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis appears in the following indexes.
Sources
"Berlin Academy." Science in the Enlightenment: An Encyclopedia, edited by William E. Burns, ABC-CLIO, 1st edition, 2003. Credo Reference, https://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=http://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/abcscienl/berlin_academy/0?institutionId=887. Accessed 07 Jun 2017.

"Maupertuis, Pierre-Louis Moreau de." Science in the Enlightenment: An Encyclopedia, edited by William E. Burns, ABC-CLIO, 1st edition, 2003. Credo Reference, https://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=http://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/abcscienl/maupertuis_pierre_louis_moreau_de/0?institutionId=887. Accessed 07 Jun 2017.

Mervaud, Christiane. “Maupertuis.” Inventaire Voltaire. Sous la direction de Jean Goulemot, André Magnan, Didier Masseau. Paris: Gallimard, 1995, pp. 905-906.

[1] It was published following the presentation, in the Parisian salons, of an albino black child who had caused much talk in the salons and academies.

[2] For text of this paper, see: https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Loix_du_mouvement_et_du_repos_d%C3%A9duites_d%E2%80%99un_principe_metaphysique

[3] "Nature in the production of its effects always acts by the simplest means. When some change in nature occurs, the quantity of action necessary for this change is the smallest possible. "